The invention relates generally to the making of cigarettes by the consumer himself.
The making of cigarettes by the consumer himself has been known for a long time in a great variety of forms and has never been completely supplanted in spite of the great perfection of the industrial production of conventional finished cigarettes. Recently, the production of cigarettes by the consumer himself has even increased again as a result of both a certain fashion trend (nostalgia wave and) increasingly also of financial considerations and the consumer's wish to economise, particularly because of the drastic price increases for mass-produced industrially made conventional cigarettes. These price increases are due in turn to the relatively high tax to which manufactured cigarettes are subjected in most countries, compared with other tobacco products or tobacco as such.
The making of cigarettes by the consumer himself is done traditionally substantially in two basic forms, that is by the known self-rolling of cigarettes using conventional cigarette papers preferably provided with adhesive edge gumming, and the self-stuffing of cigarettes using commercially available cigarette sleeves (usually with filter piece). Both traditional types of make-your-own cigarettes require considerable manual skill and a certain time expenditure and in some cases particular implements and devices. The cigarettes rolled by hand even by practiced consumers turn out very differently as regards size (diameter), firmness (fullness) and degree of filling over the length of the cigarette, and on the whole form only a primitive substitute for industrially made conventional cigarettes. Also troublesome is the inevitable crumbling of tobacco which also impairs the yield, i.e. the number of cigarettes which can be made by rolling-your-own with a given packet of cigarette fine cut tobacco. By using certain known self-rolling small implements the making of cigarettes by the consumer himself using this method can be simplified to a certain degree, but the necessity of using such implements itself represents a disadvantage, and even rolling cigarettes with such devices still requires a certain manual skill and the uniformity of the cigarettes made therewith by the consumer himself is still not satisfactory. The same applies to the other fundamental type of making of cigarettes by the consumer himself, that is the self-stuffing of cigarettes using commercially available cigarette shells, generally filter cigarette shells, which with the aid of special stuffing devices in the form of small implements are stuffed by the consumer himself. Systems of this type and stuffing devices for them are known for example from Austrian patent 146,213, French patent 427,582 and U.S. Pat. No. 638,904. These self-stuffing methods also require a certain manual skill in manipulating the stuffing device, and the quality of the self-stuffed cigarettes is also not satisfactory as regards uniformity of the degree of filling; here as well, the necessity of using a small implement itself represents a disadvantage, especially since tis substantially restricts the making of cigarettes by the consumer himself to making a stock thereof in advance.
German utility model G 83 09 186.6 discloses a system for the making of cigarettes by the consumer himself in which the consumer is provided with an exactly proportioned amount of tobacco, corresponding for example to the filling of a conventional industrially made cigarette, in the form of an industrially prefabricated sheathed tobacco skein ("cigarette tobacco cartridge") which as such is not smokable. The skein and is open at its end faces and the tobacco filling of which can be transferred in relatively simple manner into a prefabricated (filter) cigarette shell of a usual commercial type or into a cigarette shell gummed from a roll-your-own cigarette paper. For this purpose the system has associated therewith a plunger adapted to the internal diameter of the skein sheath; for making the cigarette by the consumer himself the prefabricated cigarette tobacco cartridge is introduced in the axial direction into the shell portion of the filter cigarette shell until abutment against the filter portion, and then at the outer projecting end of the tobacco cartridge the associated matching plunger is introduced and with the latter the tobacco filling is transferred by axial ejection from the skein sheath of the prefabricated product into the shell portion of the filter cigarette shell. The sheathed tobacco skein ("cigarette tobacco cartridge") made as an industrial prefabricated product is made so that it is not itself smokable; for this purpose the skein sheath may be made from an incombustible (or hardly combustible) material (for example a thin metal foil) and/or provided with a perforation; when using such a perforation the skein sheath may also be made from a combustible material, for example a plastic foil or also from a (possible metal-coated) paper of adequate strength and stiffness. The formation of the prefabricated sheathed tobacco skein, with a skein sheath of an adequately strong and inherently stiff (and possible perforated) material as prefabricated product not itself smokable, has advantageous functional aspects (good introduceability of the cartridge into the cigarette paper shell and adequate resistance to the stresses on ejection of the tobacco skein filling into the cigarette shell). It has the further advantage that a prefabricated product, not itself smokable, in most countries is subjected to less tax than a conventional industrially made finished cigarette. The prefabricated product in the form of the prefabricated sheathed tobacco skein (cigarette tobacco cartridge) can be made favourably industrially with substantial adoption of the highly sophisticated cigarette manufacturing techniques.
Thus, the system known from German utility model G 83 09 186.6 makes available in technically and economically advantageous manner, to the person making his own cigarettes, the advantages of the highly sophisticated largely automated industrial cigarette production, by supplying to the consumer a preliminary product suitable for the relatively simple production of the cigarette by said consumer. However, in spite of its simplicity this known system still requires a certain manual skill in conjunction with the transferring of the tobacco filling of the cigarette tobacco cartridge into the cigarette paper shell of the finished cigarette, this also requiring an extremely simple implement in the form of a plunger for the axial ejection of the cigarette filling out of the cartridge into the cigarette paper shell. This transfer by an ejection operation also involves certain restrictions on the skein sheath of the prefabricated product; the latter must firstly have good sliding properties to enable introduction into the cigarette paper shell in the narrowest possible fit; it should also have a certain inherent stiffness which is not too low and have adequate tensile strength to withstand the stresses in the axial transfer of the tobacco filling to the cigarette paper shell. For this reason, in the practical execution of the known system a relatively still material of adequate tensile strength, for example in the form of a metal-laminated paper composite material, is provided for the skein sheath, which on the production side requires certain interventions in the manufacturing techniques otherwise largely adopted from the highly sophisticated industrial cigarette production. In addition, if the manipulation is not carried out quite properly or is conducted somewhat inattentively, certain irregularities or imperfections can arise in the transfer of the tobacco filling to the cigarette paper shell. For instance, the axial region of the filter paper shell remote from the introduction end and adjoining the filter portion may not be filled or may not fully firmly filled, and at the introduction end of the cigarette shell some tobacco may drop out.
A generally similar system using an industrially prefabricated cigarette, tobacco cartridge not as such smokable, and in the form of a sheathed tobacco skein open at the end sides, is also known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,710 and 3,927,681 (both in the name of Bramhill). The making of the final cigarette by the consumer himself in this known system is however substantially more complicated. It requires a relatively sophisticated separate means in which, in a complicated and involved operation, the skein sheath (preferably consisting of cellophane or a plastic foil) of the tobacco cartridge must be withdrawn in axial direction between an outer pushed-on cigarette paper shell and the inner tobacco filling.
German laid-open specification DE-OS 3,244,906 (in the name of Hofmann and Schrader) finally also discloses the general concept of forming preliminary portions by the manufacturer of amounts of tobacco corresponding to a cigarette filling, it also being mentioned that the individual portions can be sheathed with conventional cigarette paper rendered non-drawable. No information is given on the nature of the further processing of these preportioned units made by the manufacturer to give a finished cigarette made by the consumer himself.